Routine Physical

BodBot generates personalized workouts

In theory, we’d love to have a personal trainer. But in practice, they’re pricy, difficult to work into our schedule and potentially judgmental of our inability to plank on one arm.

That’s why we’ve signed up for BodBot, a free personal-training Web and mobile app that generates workouts just for you.

Users begin by answering some basic questions about gender (OK, that one’s easy), fitness goals and current workout practices (it’s better if you tell the truth). Next, BodBot probes to see what, exactly, it can do for you: Do you have access to weights and gym equipment? What’s your realistic time commitment? How many nudge-y work-out-now notifications do you want to get per week?

Upon gathering your responses, BodBot is ready to build your plan and email you daily with proposed workouts.

We, for instance, are expected to sweat three times a week; today’s session involved 28 back squats, 28 hamstring curls and 25 minutes of running. BodBot links to pictures and detailed instructions for all exercises and lets you report which routines you like and don’t like. (It uses this info when generating future workouts.)

There’s no denying that the app itself is kind of janky-looking, but we’ve always been suspicious of anyone who tries to look too good at the gym.